


J & E

by FlightOfInsanity



Category: Destiny (Video Game), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: And Got a Little Out of Hand, Gen, just an excuse to write it, no real plot, this started as just a "hey what if" idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 21:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7590733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlightOfInsanity/pseuds/FlightOfInsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Far outside the safety of the City, in a long-forgotten desert, lives an old woman known only to a few.</p>
            </blockquote>





	J & E

Lox folded herself into a nook in the rocks and watched as the sun set over the desert horizon. The vast orange and red landscape swept out as far as she could see, interrupted by towering spires of wind-carved rock. It was quiet, she was alone, and she was happy.

She loved her fireteam, but there was something uniquely wonderful about being in the field on a solo mission. It was a scouting mission deep in the wild – someone had detected something or whatever (she hadn’t paid much attention after “we need you in the field”) and Cayde-6 had picked her to check it out.

A quick check of her radar showed nothing in the area. She wrapped up in her cloak and settled in for sleep, trusting her hiding spot to keep her hidden and her Ghost to wake her if something went wrong.

A few hours later and the metallic shrieking scream of Taken appearing jarred Lox awake and she was in a crouch, rifle in hand, before she knew what she was doing.

“Taken?”

Ghost hesitated before answering. “It would seem so…”

Lox swept her sights across the landscape, looking for any sign of movement or red on the radar. Nothing.

She lowered her gun, confused. “Where are they?”

“I have no idea,” Ghost replied. “But I believe the rip was over there. We may need to check it out.”

A marker winked into existence on her visor and she sighed heavily as she dropped to the ground. Moving fast and low, she darted from cover to cover, using the shadows from the full moon shining overhead to try to stay hidden. She wasn’t sure it would work against the Taken, but old habits die hard.

A short while later and she found the puddle-that-wasn’t-a-puddle that indicated a Taken presence. But… still no Taken.

She frowned in confusion and turned in a slow circle. Off to the left, back toward where she had been sleeping, something glinted in the moonlight.

“Looks inanimate,” Ghost said, having seen the object.

Lox slowly approached the object, stopping once when a vague haze of red appeared on the far edge of her radar. She looked in the direction of the red, but still couldn’t see anything. A second later and it was gone.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Is that a… box?”

She looked down – startled to see the shiny object already so close – and realized it was, indeed, a box. A box wrapped in some sort of decorative paper with a tag on top, held down by a little red rock. Very, _very_ slowly, she stretched out a foot and nudged the box. It rocked back a bit and she launched herself a few feet backwards, landing in a tense crouch. Nothing bad happened and she approached the box again, squatting down to read the tag.

‘J & E’

She carefully pulled the tag out from under the rock and flipped it around. J & E. That was all it said.

“Huh.”

“Indeed,” Ghost replied.

“Should we… open it?”

She could feel Ghost’s confusion in the silence following her question. “I… really don’t know.”

A few minutes passed as she stared at the odd box before curiosity got the best of her and she gingerly peeled off the wrapping and opened the box. Whatever she expected to find, it wasn’t a dozen still-warm cookies. She pulled off her helmet and picked up one of the cookies.

It looked like a cookie and it smelled like a cookie. She paused, shrugged, and took a bite. It tasted like… _heaven_. Her shoulders sagged and she hummed in delight, popping the rest of the cookie in her mouth before Ghost could object.

“These are _amazing!_ ”

“Put your helmet back on.”

“I will, just one m—”

The metallic shriek came again, this time from somewhere close behind her, and she scrambled for her gun and whirled around. A single, lanky Taken stood some 20 feet away, not moving. Lox hesitated a moment and the hazy creature tilted its head (or what she assumed was its head) and waved.

She didn’t know what to do.

Her gun lowered – a move Ghost loudly protested – and she simply stared, dumbfounded, at the weird creature in front of her. First the cookies, now the apparently friendly Taken.

“We died, didn’t we?”

“Oh, no, my dear.”

Lox shouted in alarm and spun to face the sudden new voice, overbalancing and falling onto her rear. She tried to snap her gun up, but a pair of shadowy hands snatched it from her grasp. The Taken from before popped in behind the cloaked figure and dropped her gun onto the dusty ground.

“ _Erika_.”

The cloaked figure chastised – _chastised_ – the Taken for dropping the gun and it rumbled and shuffled a few feet away. Lox looked from strange person to strange alien and back and tried to ask what was going on. A distressed and confused squeak was all she managed.

A gentle chuckle came from the more human figure as it reached up and flipped back its hood, revealing a kind face framed with greying hair. The woman sat herself down in front of Lox and gently patted the Hunter’s knee.

“Don’t you worry about Erika, my dear. They won’t hurt you out here.”

“I… um… Erika?”

The Taken waved.

The woman shrugged. “It’s the name they all wanted. Name’s Josie.” She held out a hand and Lox took it in a slow handshake.

“I’m, uh… Lox.”

Josie smiled – a warm, motherly smile – and looked Lox over in a way that made the Hunter feel like the old woman was looking into her soul.

“You’re an awful long way from home, aren’t you, bright one?”

“How did you—”

“I know a Guardian when I see one. It’s been a long time since we’ve had visitors, but you’re not the first of your kind to wind up out here,” Josie explained. “Tell me – what brings a Guardian all the way out here to my desert?”

Ghost blinked into existence, twirling a bit as he studied Josie and her odd companion, and answered, “There were odd gravitational anomalies detected here and we were sent to investigate.”

Josie blinked and cast a glance back at Erika. The Taken bristled – an odd movement that blurred its outline with a cascade of little spikes – and looked away. The old woman huffed and shook her head.

“That would be something the Erikas have been working on. I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you it’s not a danger to your City.”

“Oh,” Lox said. “And you’re sure we’re not dead?”

Josie laughed. “Quite sure, bright one. Now here –” she handed the Hunter a squishy, wrapped package. “Take this and have a safe journey home.”

She patted Lox’s knee again and just as suddenly as they’d appeared, both Josie and Erika had vanished. The only evidence they’d ever existed being the two odd gifts and the shiny puddle of void. Lox stared at the empty space where Josie had been sitting and idly squished the new gift, listening to the paper crinkle.

Ghost looked down at the lumpy rectangle. “What do you think it is?”

“Let’s find out.”

Lox delicately opened the gift, revealing a pale blue and grey blanket. Bright silver threads wove in and out of the blue and grey in a pattern reminiscent of a star field. She ran a hand over it, her glove easily sliding over the soft fabric, and smiled.

“Ghost, can you call the ship?”

“Of course, but we haven’t finished our mission.”

“Haven’t we?” Lox waved a hand at the expanse of desert around them. “There’s nothing out here. Must’ve just been a sensor malfunction or something.”

Ghost peered at her for a second before blinking back out of existence and summoning their jumpship. “I guess we’ll have to get someone to check those out.”

Lox snorted and gathered up her things – her helmet and gun as well as the two odd gifts. A sudden idea came to her and she decided to leave a gift of her own. She dug through her pockets until she found what she was looking for – an odd pink and black ring she’d picked up on one of her patrols. She wrapped it up in some paper from one of Josie’s gift and sat it on one of the low rocks nearby. Hopefully either Josie or Erika would see it from… wherever it was they went.

The ship appeared overhead and Ghost transmatted them up. Lox wasn’t sure how she was going to explain this (or if she was even going to try) but she wasn’t due for a check in for at least another day, so she had some time to think about it. But first, she was going to get some actual sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by playing an outrageous amount of Destiny and listening to the First Date episode (I think that's the one) of Welcome to Night Vale, where the townsfolk all start to become buzzing shadow beings.
> 
> Cross-posted on tumblr: http://masterjuridical.tumblr.com/post/147977855712/josie-erika


End file.
